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Mohammad Mohammadipour

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Can Money Buy Happiness?

Maybe more cash does make people happier. Especially salient are analyses done by University of Pennsylvania economists Daniel Sacks, Betsey Stevenson, and Justin Wolfers. In their updated 2010 study, “Subjective Well-Being, Income, Economic Development and Growth,” the three compare subjective well-being survey data from 140 countries with those countries' income and economic growth rates. The researchers find that within individual countries richer people are happier than poorer; people in richer countries are happier than people in poorer countries; and over time increased economic growth leads to increased happiness. “These results together suggest that measured subjective well-being grows hand in hand with material living standards,” they conclude..

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    Desiree M. Mondesir

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    Feb 2 2013: The obvious answer is no: money cannot buy happiness. However, money can buy you things, it can erase or prevent debts, it can pay for medicine and medical procedures, and it allows you to be able to give to someone else in need presuming of course that your are benevolent in nature. These things may not be able to make you happy in and of themselves, but they can certainly heighten the quality of one's life.

    "Money answereth all THINGS." (Ecclesiastes 10:19 emphasis mine)

    The LOVE of money, greed and avarice, is what makes money appear to be evil and rob one of their happiness. When you keep money in its place, you can be as happy as you want to be!

    I can give you ten dollars to buy your child a Happy Meal and that money enabled that child to be happy. Or I could take that money and give it to the drug dealer on the corner, purchase drugs and addict myself. That money will have enabled me to put myself in bondage and become wholly unhappy. It's how you see the money and what you do with the money that makes one happy, sad, mad, etc.

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